Reminder!!!!!  Tomorrow Jeffrey Leever will be a “Guest Author” and will be giving away a signed copy of his book The University !!!!

Reminder !!!!  This coming Sunday, Vincent Zandri author of Moonlight Falls, will be here live!!
He is currently on his virtual tour of Moonlight Falls and shortly will be trying a “revolutionary experiment” (comment by Dorothy Thompson of Pump Up Your Book) with his next novel “The Remains“.   He will be sharing his thoughts on EReaders and Print.  So have your thoughts, comments and/or questions ready and post them here.  He has generously offered to reply to all comments and answer any questions.  Would your followers be interested?  Then please blog about this event and invite them to join in the discussion.

You don’t want to miss this !!!!!  Mark your calendars for this coming Sunday, May 23rd.  There have been many discussions on many blogs about EReaders vs Print.  Right???  What we, the consumers and avid readers think.  BUT, what about an author’s point of view.  Well,  are you sitting down????

On Sunday, an author, that is presently on virtual tour for his current book will be giving us his thoughts.  Not only that….BUT….he generously has agreed to check in, here on this blog,  and answer any questions you may have or reply to your comments.  Who is this author you ask?   Its………..

You don’t want to miss this !!!!!  Mark your calendars for this coming Sunday, May 23rd.  There have been many discussions on many blogs about EReaders vs Print.  Right???  What we, the consumers and avid readers think.  BUT, what about an author’s point of view.  Well,  are you sitting down????

On Sunday, an author, that is presently on virtual tour for his current book will be giving us his thoughts.  Not only that….BUT….he generously has agreed to check in, here on this blog,  and answer any questions you may have or reply to your comments.  Who is this author you ask?   Its………..

I am honored to have Mr. Vincent Zandri, author of Moonlight Falls, visiting today as he virtually tours the blogosphere.

Vincent Zandri

Vincent Zandri is an award-winning novelist, essayist and freelance photojournalist. His novel As Catch Can (Delacorte) was touted in two pre-publication articles by Publishers Weekly and was called “Brilliant” upon its publication by The New York Post. The Boston Herald attributed it as “The most arresting first crime novel to break into print this season.” Other novels include Godchild (Bantam/Dell) and Permanence (NPI). Translated into several languages including Japanese and the Dutch, Zandri’s novels have also been sought out by numerous major movie producers, including Heyday Productions and DreamWorks. Moonlight Falls is his fourth novel. He is the author of the blogs, Dangerous Dispatches and Embedded in Africa for RT ( Russia Today TV) which have been syndicated and translated in several different languages throughout the world. He also writes for other global publications, including Culture 11, Globalia, Globalspec and more. Zandri’s nonfiction has appeared in New York Newsday, Hudson Valley Magazine, Game and Fish Magazine and others, while his essays and short fiction have been featured in many journals including Fugue, Maryland Review and Orange Coast Magazine. He holds an M.F.A. in Writing from Vermont College and is a 2010 International Thrillerl. Writer’s Awards panel judge. Zandri currently divides his time between New York and Europe. He is the drummer for the Albany-based punk band to Blisterz. You can visit his website at www.vincentzandri.com or his blog at http://www.vincentzandri.blogspot.com/

Moonlight Falls is the Albany, New York-based paranoid tale (in the Hitchcock tradition) of former APD Detective turned Private Investigator/Massage Therapist, Richard “Dick” Moonlight, who believes he might be responsible for the brutal slaying by knife of his illicit lover, the beautiful Scarlet Montana. The situation is made all the worse since Scarlet is the wife of Moonlight’s boss, Chief of Detectives Jake Montana.

Why does Moonlight believe he might be responsible?

He’s got a small fragment of a .22 hollow point round buried inside his brain, lodge directly up against his cerebral cortex. The result of a botched suicide attempt four years prior to the novel’s start, an operation to remove the bullt frag would be too dangerous.

But the bullet causes Moonlight lots of problems, the least of which are the occasional memory loss and his rational ability to tell right from wrong. The bullet frag also might shift at any moment, making coma and/or sudden death, a very real possibility.

Still, Moonlight has been trying to get his life together as of late.

But when Scarlet begs him to make the trip over to her house late one rainy Sunday night to issue one of his “massages,” he makes a big mistake by sleeping with her. Later, having passed out in her bed, he will be rudely awakened by a garage door opening and Jake’s unexpected and very drunken homecoming. Making his impromptu escape out a top floor window, Moonlight will seek the safety of his home.

Two hours later however, he will receive another unexpected visit from Jake Montana. This time the big Captain has sobering news to report. He’s discovered his wife’s mutilated body in her own bed. She’s been murdered and now he needs the P.I. to investigate it in association with Albany ’s “overtaxed” Special Independent Unit before I.A. pokes their nose into the affair. Moonlight takes a big step back. Is it possible he made a second trip to the Montana home-sweet-home and just has no recollection of it? Once there, did he perform a heinous crime on his part-time lover? Or is this some kind of set up by his former boss? Is it really Jake who is responsible for Scarlet’s death? Does he wish for Moonlight to cover up his involvement, seal the case before Internal Affairs starts poking their nose into the situation?

There’s another problem too.

Covering Moonlight’s palms and the pads of his fingers are numerous scratches and cuts. Are these defensive wounds? Wounds he received when Scarlet put up a struggle? Or are they offensive wounds? Wounds he couldn’t avoid when making his attack on Scarlet with a blade? The answer is not so simple since Moonlight has no idea where he acquired the wounds.

Having no choice but to take on the mission (if only to cover his own ass), Moonlight can only hope the answers to his many questions point to his former boss and not himself.

Read an exerpt from his book and the raving reviews he has gotten thus far.  The link is http://www.pumpupyourbook.com/2010/04/19/moonlight-falls-virtual-book-tour-may-2010/.  You can also see the trailer of Moonlight Falls at the above site.

.

I am honored to have Mr. Vincent Zandri, author of Moonlight Falls, visiting today as he virtually tours the blogosphere.

Vincent Zandri

Vincent Zandri is an award-winning novelist, essayist and freelance photojournalist. His novel As Catch Can (Delacorte) was touted in two pre-publication articles by Publishers Weekly and was called “Brilliant” upon its publication by The New York Post. The Boston Herald attributed it as “The most arresting first crime novel to break into print this season.” Other novels include Godchild (Bantam/Dell) and Permanence (NPI). Translated into several languages including Japanese and the Dutch, Zandri’s novels have also been sought out by numerous major movie producers, including Heyday Productions and DreamWorks. Moonlight Falls is his fourth novel. He is the author of the blogs, Dangerous Dispatches and Embedded in Africa for RT ( Russia Today TV) which have been syndicated and translated in several different languages throughout the world. He also writes for other global publications, including Culture 11, Globalia, Globalspec and more. Zandri’s nonfiction has appeared in New York Newsday, Hudson Valley Magazine, Game and Fish Magazine and others, while his essays and short fiction have been featured in many journals including Fugue, Maryland Review and Orange Coast Magazine. He holds an M.F.A. in Writing from Vermont College and is a 2010 International Thrillerl. Writer’s Awards panel judge. Zandri currently divides his time between New York and Europe. He is the drummer for the Albany-based punk band to Blisterz. You can visit his website at www.vincentzandri.com or his blog at http://www.vincentzandri.blogspot.com/

Moonlight Falls is the Albany, New York-based paranoid tale (in the Hitchcock tradition) of former APD Detective turned Private Investigator/Massage Therapist, Richard “Dick” Moonlight, who believes he might be responsible for the brutal slaying by knife of his illicit lover, the beautiful Scarlet Montana. The situation is made all the worse since Scarlet is the wife of Moonlight’s boss, Chief of Detectives Jake Montana.

Why does Moonlight believe he might be responsible?

He’s got a small fragment of a .22 hollow point round buried inside his brain, lodge directly up against his cerebral cortex. The result of a botched suicide attempt four years prior to the novel’s start, an operation to remove the bullt frag would be too dangerous.

But the bullet causes Moonlight lots of problems, the least of which are the occasional memory loss and his rational ability to tell right from wrong. The bullet frag also might shift at any moment, making coma and/or sudden death, a very real possibility.

Still, Moonlight has been trying to get his life together as of late.

But when Scarlet begs him to make the trip over to her house late one rainy Sunday night to issue one of his “massages,” he makes a big mistake by sleeping with her. Later, having passed out in her bed, he will be rudely awakened by a garage door opening and Jake’s unexpected and very drunken homecoming. Making his impromptu escape out a top floor window, Moonlight will seek the safety of his home.

Two hours later however, he will receive another unexpected visit from Jake Montana. This time the big Captain has sobering news to report. He’s discovered his wife’s mutilated body in her own bed. She’s been murdered and now he needs the P.I. to investigate it in association with Albany ’s “overtaxed” Special Independent Unit before I.A. pokes their nose into the affair. Moonlight takes a big step back. Is it possible he made a second trip to the Montana home-sweet-home and just has no recollection of it? Once there, did he perform a heinous crime on his part-time lover? Or is this some kind of set up by his former boss? Is it really Jake who is responsible for Scarlet’s death? Does he wish for Moonlight to cover up his involvement, seal the case before Internal Affairs starts poking their nose into the situation?

There’s another problem too.

Covering Moonlight’s palms and the pads of his fingers are numerous scratches and cuts. Are these defensive wounds? Wounds he received when Scarlet put up a struggle? Or are they offensive wounds? Wounds he couldn’t avoid when making his attack on Scarlet with a blade? The answer is not so simple since Moonlight has no idea where he acquired the wounds.

Having no choice but to take on the mission (if only to cover his own ass), Moonlight can only hope the answers to his many questions point to his former boss and not himself.

Read an exerpt from his book and the raving reviews he has gotten thus far.  The link is http://www.pumpupyourbook.com/2010/04/19/moonlight-falls-virtual-book-tour-may-2010/.  You can also see the trailer of Moonlight Falls at the above site.

.

Please help me welcome Mr. Bill Walker, author of A Note from an Old Aquaintance

Author’s Thoughts:
One of the most difficult aspects of writing, in my humble opinion, is dialogue. It is also one of the most important. In fact, I would wager that most people wouldn’t care to read a book without it. So, how does one develop an ear for dialogue? After all, we hear people around us speak all day long, every day. Dialogue should be a snap, right? Wrong. In real life people speak in fragments that would look awful on the printed page and sound even worse in the reader’s mind, and I’m not even counting if it makes sense or not. Your dialogue must serve the story and can’t afford to waste time going off on tangents like all of us do in real life.

When I first endeavored to write professionally, while I could turn a decent descriptive phrase, or two, dialogue was my weak point, my Achilles heel, as it were. It sounded phony, stilted and wooden. No matter what I wrote, I hated the dialogue. And then I started using a technique that seems to work for me. I started casting my characters in my mind, using either real people, such as people I knew or famous actors and actresses, or simply vivid constructs, and assigned them voices and accents. I then deliberately imagined each scene as a little movie of the mind, to be played over and over again as I tried different lines of dialogue. Now, this may seem like a no-brainer, but this may not work for everyone. Because of my desire to be a filmmaker I tend to think cinematically.

Once you start doing this, and it will still take practice, the dialogue will flow more naturally, because you as the writer will inhabit the role of each character as you write them. In effect, you become the ultimate actor. One thing you should avoid, however, is too much dialect. While Mark Twain got away with it, modern readers don’t want to wade through pages of words with strange and unique spellings. Instead of making your characters more vivid, you distract the reader, pulling them out of the story. And you NEVER want to do that, if you can help it.

Through my little cinematic technique you can use normal language, slanting a word or two, or using certain phrases unique to that character to make him or her sound Irish, for instance. They don’t have to speak like the Lucky Charms leprechaun and in fact they shouldn’t, unless you want to stray into the land of cliché. In any event, give my technique a try and see if it works for you.

About A Note From an Old Acquaintance:
Brian Weller is a haunted man. It’s been two years since the tragic accident that left his three-year-old son dead and his wife in an irreversible coma. A popular author of mega-selling thrillers, Brian’s life has reached a crossroads: his new book is stalled, his wife’s prognosis is dire, and he teeters on the brink of despair.

Everything changes the morning an e-mail arrives from Boston artist Joanna Richman. Her heartfelt note brings back all the poignant memories: the night their eyes met, the fiery passion of their short-lived affair, and the agonizing moment he was forced to leave Joanna forever. Now, fifteen years later, the guilt and anger threaten to overwhelm him. Vowing to make things right, Brian arranges a book-signing tour that will take him back to Boston. He is eager to see Joanna again, but remains unsure where their reunion will lead. One thing is certain: the forces that tore their love asunder will stop at nothing to keep them apart.

Filled with tender romance and taut suspense, A Note from an Old Acquaintance is an unforgettable story about fate, honor, and the power of true love.

You can find my review dated 02/27/10….
Thank you Mr. Walker for stoppng by, sharing your thoughts and allowing me the opportunity of reading a very enjoyable book.  This reader will be awaiting your next novel.

Please help me welcome Mr. Bill Walker, author of A Note from an Old Aquaintance

Author’s Thoughts:
One of the most difficult aspects of writing, in my humble opinion, is dialogue. It is also one of the most important. In fact, I would wager that most people wouldn’t care to read a book without it. So, how does one develop an ear for dialogue? After all, we hear people around us speak all day long, every day. Dialogue should be a snap, right? Wrong. In real life people speak in fragments that would look awful on the printed page and sound even worse in the reader’s mind, and I’m not even counting if it makes sense or not. Your dialogue must serve the story and can’t afford to waste time going off on tangents like all of us do in real life.

When I first endeavored to write professionally, while I could turn a decent descriptive phrase, or two, dialogue was my weak point, my Achilles heel, as it were. It sounded phony, stilted and wooden. No matter what I wrote, I hated the dialogue. And then I started using a technique that seems to work for me. I started casting my characters in my mind, using either real people, such as people I knew or famous actors and actresses, or simply vivid constructs, and assigned them voices and accents. I then deliberately imagined each scene as a little movie of the mind, to be played over and over again as I tried different lines of dialogue. Now, this may seem like a no-brainer, but this may not work for everyone. Because of my desire to be a filmmaker I tend to think cinematically.

Once you start doing this, and it will still take practice, the dialogue will flow more naturally, because you as the writer will inhabit the role of each character as you write them. In effect, you become the ultimate actor. One thing you should avoid, however, is too much dialect. While Mark Twain got away with it, modern readers don’t want to wade through pages of words with strange and unique spellings. Instead of making your characters more vivid, you distract the reader, pulling them out of the story. And you NEVER want to do that, if you can help it.

Through my little cinematic technique you can use normal language, slanting a word or two, or using certain phrases unique to that character to make him or her sound Irish, for instance. They don’t have to speak like the Lucky Charms leprechaun and in fact they shouldn’t, unless you want to stray into the land of cliché. In any event, give my technique a try and see if it works for you.

About A Note From an Old Acquaintance:
Brian Weller is a haunted man. It’s been two years since the tragic accident that left his three-year-old son dead and his wife in an irreversible coma. A popular author of mega-selling thrillers, Brian’s life has reached a crossroads: his new book is stalled, his wife’s prognosis is dire, and he teeters on the brink of despair.

Everything changes the morning an e-mail arrives from Boston artist Joanna Richman. Her heartfelt note brings back all the poignant memories: the night their eyes met, the fiery passion of their short-lived affair, and the agonizing moment he was forced to leave Joanna forever. Now, fifteen years later, the guilt and anger threaten to overwhelm him. Vowing to make things right, Brian arranges a book-signing tour that will take him back to Boston. He is eager to see Joanna again, but remains unsure where their reunion will lead. One thing is certain: the forces that tore their love asunder will stop at nothing to keep them apart.

Filled with tender romance and taut suspense, A Note from an Old Acquaintance is an unforgettable story about fate, honor, and the power of true love.

You can find my review dated 02/27/10….
Thank you Mr. Walker for stoppng by, sharing your thoughts and allowing me the opportunity of reading a very enjoyable book.  This reader will be awaiting your next novel.